Conservative Party transport speaker doesn't appear to have a clue.
Firstly any new rail line the length of the country, starting to design it today, is on past form going to take 20-30 years to realise whereas the gross congestion at Heathrow is now.
Secondly there will be extreme opposition to it in all the areas it will pass through - which are by and large good Conservative-voting areas. So the Conservatives will never, ever approve it.
Thirdly the markets served by a rail service from Central London to Central Manchester, and an air service from Heathrow to Ringway, are quite different.
a) Many of the passengers are connecting at Heathrow and would certainly not welcome being forced to take the HEx to Paddington, then somehow get with all their bags to St Pancras, then go to Manchester.
b) Those who are not connecting are by and large those for whom the air service is more convenient than the train. If you live in the Thames Valley for example. Just try and take the train from there to Manchester for the day if you live there.
c) Other transport issues have already impacted on the rail service from London to Birmingham and Manchester. These have for a long time stopped at Watford Junction to pick up passengers from the Home Counties but the railway has noticed such a reduction in demand that they have reduced Watford stops significantly. A main part of this was attributed to gross peak hour congestion on the M25 for those driving from home, which has led to such unrelability of journey times that passengers were consistently missing trains, and have abandoned the train for road/air alternatives.
Fourthly the domestic flights at Heathrow are not the principal source of congestion there, they have been reduced substantially over the years, and the operators would doubtless like to get rid of them as unprofitable were it not for their direct feeder to Heathrow function. The demand at Heathrow is for international flights; look how the day they were permitted to do so all the US carriers walked out of Gatwick and across to Heathrow. Also demonstrated, inevitably, by the BBC TV footage this morning, which used as its main backdrop a Turkish Airlines 737 landing (doubtless after 20 minutes round the stack at Biggin). Quite how the new train route will handle passengers from Istanbul was not explained.
Last edited by WHBM; 29th Sep 2008 at 14:53.
Reason: Typos